Hi’ilani

Since November, the Tridipanel team has been erecting the structure of the house with the SCIP panels. They began with the eastern side, building scaffolding to support the first roof until concrete supports are poured. Rebar embedded into the foundation extends into the SCIP panel walls to give extra strength. The panel connections are also reinforced with additional metal mesh. When the concrete skin is added inside and out, the entire building: roof, walls and foundation, will be solidly integrated, creating a building that will withstand earthquakes and strong winds.

In support walls, space for concrete support “columns” is burned or cut out of the panels, and rebar and reinforcing mesh is added. Forms are then built into which concrete will be poured to form the column. Once the support system is poured and in place, the scaffolding can be moved to other areas and reused. Eventually all the wood will be re-purposed, including the creation of built-in furniture for the interior.

Currently, you can see that one roof and walls are up on nearly half of the house and the scaffolding is in place for the largest roof, which will cover the living room, dining room and kitchen.

On November 25, a cloudy day with periods of strong rain, the Oili Construction crew worked its magic and poured the Hi’ilani House foundation. (See a time-lapse movie of the pour.)

Assisted by drivers and crew from West Hawaii Concrete, 140 cubic yards of concrete was poured in about four hours. By the end of the day, the slab was finished and the forms removed.

The Oili Crew proved themselves to be masters of their craft. For those of us who are not normally involved in this type of construction, it was fascinating to see the intricate dance that is required to pour a monolithic concrete slab like this.

All of the work done so far on this project has been exceptional. We are incredibly fortunate to have such wonderful craftspeople working with us.

Our hats are off to all the exceptional people and crews who have worked with us so far: Krochina Engineering, Ty Drake, DeRego Grading, Oili Construction, West Hawaii Concrete, Mattos Electric, Van Dijk Plumbing, and Hadrian Tridipanel Systems.

And, of course, we have a special thank you today for Robert Mechielsen, the master designer, and his team at Studio RMA.

It’s been an interesting week.

Robert and Bobby, the bulldozer operator, continued this past week to transform the hilltop site into the setting which will become Hi’ilani.

When this started we all thought that what this meant was to create a good flat site at the top of the hill on which to start the house foundation. This was certainly a primary objective. But as the vegetation was peeled away, and as the dirt started to move, events began to unfold that none of us expected. (Well, Robert may have expected them, but I think he was even surprised.)

As for that primary objective: we needed to take several feet from the very top of the hill to find the extent of the bedrock that will serve as the basis of the foundation. As Teri noted in her last post, the hill is a pu’u, which is a volcanic mound. The top had been previously scraped flat by a previous owner some years ago, and the dirt taken off then was pushed toward the ocean side. That dirt was still relatively thinly packed, and this fill could not be the base for any of the foundation. If the rock base was not sufficiently large enough for the house footprint, we would have to dig farther down for the key foundation footings and then backfill later.

After the bulldozer scraped down a few feet we found a large table of pretty solid rock. After each day, Dave and Robert would go up to the site and lay out the house to see how it matched to the rock table that was being uncovered.

Since the house is based on a hexagonal shape, the floor plan is laid out on a triangular grid. There is a large equilateral triangle which is 72 feet long per side which can be placed on the site, and the entire floor plan can then be derived from that. So Dave created the 72 foot triangle out of yellow string, and this was stretched out on the ground and oriented to quickly determine how the floor plan would correspond to the rock table.

Based on this, Robert rotated the house footprint about 5 degrees to the northeast. With this orientation, two things happened: the house footprint matched up with the rock table extraordinarily well, and it also perfectly centered the view lines for the three principal “wings” of the house structure.

The grading also revealed the general layout of the hill as it descended in front of the house. With the land revealed, Robert could start to plan how this front hillside will be shaped to complement and enhance the house design.

As we will be using a water catchment system to provide our water supply from rainwater, there will be a large 30,000 gallon water tank down the hillside in front of the living room. The circular top of this tank will serve as a patio which will be connected to the living room via two stairways.

To complement this, Robert and Bobby created a small hill “extension” or berm that projects out from the other side of the house in front of the East master bedroom suite. Between this and the patio in front of the living room will be a recessed area in which will be placed several small terraces where people can sit and lounge.

It is an extraordinary experience to walk the site with Robert as he explains his vision. One of the unique aspects of this project is how that vision continues to emerge as we move forward. This has been the pattern during the three and a half years of planning, and it continues into the construction phase. At each stage where we encounter a challenge or a question on how to proceed, an answer emerges that strengthens and enhances the design.

Robert’s great talent is in capturing these ideas as they emerge, and then enabling each idea to become a reality. It is a process providing of what is necessary to let Hi’ilani grow into what it will be.

Last week we began the grading of our house site, driveway and parking area. So far, the site has been scraped down about a foot. It appears that it will have to come down another two feet to give us a good solid area large enough for the foundation. Some of the dirt is being used to fill in the parking area to make it flat. A berm was created on the hillside to catch large rocks that might roll down when dirt is pushed over the edge of the top of the hill. We are collecting rocks for landscaping. We are hoping to be able to save the big Eucalyptus tree. A couple other plants and trees were saved for transplanting elsewhere. The coffee tree area that was cleared in grading will be replanted later.

It appears that the house will be situated on an ancient pu’u, a cone created from ash and cinder from an extinct volcano. The rock there is quite different from rock in the surrounding areas. The hill had been flattened some already be a previous landowner.

We’ve been enjoying a flock of egrets that has frequented the site, waiting for the bulldozer to turn up new worms.